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What the Google Gender 'Manifesto' really Says about Silicon Valley (Op-Ed) Five years ago, Silicon Valley was rocked by a wave of "brogrammer" bad behavior, when overfunded, highly entitled, mostly white and male startup founders did things that were juvenile, out of line and just plain stupid. Most of these activities – such as putting pornography into PowerPoint slides – revolved around the explicit or implied devaluation and harassment of women and the assumption that heterosexual men's privilege could or should define the workplace. The recent "memo" scandal out of Google shows how far we have yet to go. It may be that more established and successful companies don't make job applicants deal with "bikini shots" and "gangbang interviews." But even the tech giants foster an environment where heteronormativity and male privilege is so rampant that an engineer could feel comfortable writing and distributing a screed that ef...

What is Biology? Biology is the science of life. Its name is derived from the Greek words "bios" (life) and "logos" (study). Biologists study the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution and distribution of living organisms. There are generally considered to be at least nine "umbrella" fields of biology, each of which consists of multiple subfields. Biochemistry: the study of the material substances that make up living things Botany: the study of plants, including agriculture Cellular biology: the study of the basic cellular units of living things Ecology: the study of how organisms interact with their environment Evolutionary biology: the study of the origins and changes in the diversity of life over time Genetics: the study of heredity Molecular biology: the study of biological molecules Physiology: the study of the functions of organisms and their parts Zoology: the study of animals, including animal behavior Adding to the com...

Eclipses had been regarded As Omens in the ancient world On Monday, Aug. 21, people living in the continental United States will be able to see a total solar eclipse. Humans have been alternatively amused, puzzled, bewildered and sometimes even terrified at the sight of this celestial phenomenon. A range of social and cultural reactions accompanies the observation of an eclipse. In ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq), eclipses were in fact regarded as omens, as signs of things to come. Solar and lunar eclipses For an eclipse to take place, three celestial bodies must find themselves in a straight line within their elliptic orbits. This is called a syzygy, from the Greek word "súzugos," meaning yoked or paired. From our viewpoint on Earth, there are two kinds of eclipses: solar and lunar. In a solar eclipse, the moon passes in between the sun and Earth, which results in blocking our view of the sun. In a lunar eclipse, it is the moon that crosses through th...

Teens and dad and mom Agree – cellular devices Are Pervasive Distraction As a university professor and a mother of teen boys, I am immersed in a world of young faces buried in their phones. To be fair, adults, too, are enamored with the tiny, powerful computing devices in the palms of their hands. The patterns of daily life have been forever altered by the ubiquity of digital devices. The world has been rewired. And nobody wrote a user's manual. Advances in digital media and mobile devices, and the rising power of social media, are changing the way people engage not only with the world but also with close friends and family. This generation of parents faces rapidly emerging and unprecedented challenges in managing digital devices and the activities they enable – and must simultaneously wrestle with these issues in their own lives and in the lives of their children. I recently led a research project investigating the effects of digital devices on family life in Japan. As p...

Why latest teenagers are not in Any Hurry to grow Up Teens aren't what they used to be. The teen pregnancy rate has reached an all-time low. Fewer teens are drinking alcohol, having sex or working part-time jobs. And as I found in a newly released analysis of seven large surveys, teens are also now less likely to drive, date or go out without their parents than their counterparts 10 or 20 years ago. Some have tried to explain certain aspects of these trends. Today's teens are more virtuous and responsible, sociologist David Finkelhor has argued. No, says journalist Jess Williams, they're just more boring. Others have suggested that teens aren't working because they are simply lazy. However, none of these researchers and writers has been able to tie everything together. Not drinking or having sex might be considered "virtuous," but not driving or working is unrelated to virtue – and might actually be seen as less responsible. A lower teen pregnancy...

Who are the Millennials? Teenagers, twenty- and thirty-somethings have been dubbed the Millennial Generation, or simply Millennials. But what does it mean? And how old is too old to be a Millennial? Generation Y Definition The term Millennials generally refers to the generation of people born between the early 1980s and 1990s, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Some people also include children born in the early 2000s. The Millennial Generation is also known as Generation Y, because it comes after Generation X — those people between the early 1960s and the 1980s. The publication Ad Age was one of the first to coin the term "Generation Y," in an editorial in August 1993. But the term didn't age well, and "Millennials" has largely overtaken it. But the terms basically mean the same thing. This age group has also been called the Peter Pan or Boomerang Generation because of the propensity of some to move back in with their parents, perhaps due ...

Character tendencies & personality types: what's character? What makes someone who they are? Each person has an idea of their own personality type — if they are bubbly or reserved, sensitive or thick-skinned. Psychologists who try to tease out the science of who we are define personality as individual differences in the way people tend to think, feel and behave. There are many ways to measure personality, but psychologists have mostly given up on trying to divide humanity neatly into types. Instead, they focus on personality traits. The most widely accepted of these traits are the Big Five: Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism Conveniently, you can remember these traits with the handy OCEAN mnemonic (or, if you prefer, CANOE works, too). The Big Five were developed in the 1970s by two research teams. These teams were led by Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of Health and Warren Norman and Lew...

Here's Why Yawns Are So Contagious Next time you're sitting near someone who yawns, try this: Don't yawn. Odds are, you'll find that it's pretty difficult to hold back. The reason that it's hard to stifle a yawn — especially when someone nearby is doing it and you're trying hard not to — appears to reside in the area of the brain that's responsible for motor function, a new study from England finds. Scientists refer to the urge to yawn when you see someone else doing it as contagious yawning. This is a type of "echophenomenon." In other words, it's an automatic imitation of another person, according to the study, published online today (Aug. 31) in the journal Current Biology. Other types of echophenomena include "echolalia" (imitation of someone's words) and "echopraxia" (imitation of someone's actions. [25 Weird Things Humans Do Every Day, and Why] Contagious yawning isn't unique to humans, eith...

Live technology remembers Bruno Gulotta, friend and Colleague Killed in Barcelona assault We lost a friend and a colleague to terrorism yesterday (Aug. 17). Bruno Gulotta, 35, an employee of Tom's Hardware Italy — a brand owned by Live Science parent company Purch — was on holiday in Barcelona, Spain, strolling along Las Ramblas with his partner and two young children, when he was struck and killed by a van that also took the lives of 13 others and injured more than 100. When he was hit by the van, Bruno was holding his 5-year-old son Alessandro's hand. His son was yanked away to safety by his mother, who had their 7-month-old daughter, Aria, strapped to her chest when the van struck. The terrorist group ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and authorities have arrested at least four suspects as the investigation continues, according to the Associated Press. "It is with great sadness that I must report that one of our team members was killed in th...

Why Flat-Earthers and technology Deniers can not Dispute the Eclipse If you've been paying attention, you know that on Aug. 21, we're in for a special cosmic treat: the Great American Eclipse of 2017. The moon's shadow will track a 4,000-kilometer course across the continental United States from coast to coast, beginning with Depoe Bay, Ore., and end after 93 minutes in McClellanville, S.C.. As a result, tens of millions of Americans will be treated to that rarest of natural wonders: a total eclipse of the sun. Canada, unfortunately, won't experience a total eclipse, but the view will still be impressive: The sun will be 86 per cent eclipsed in Vancouver, 70 per cent in Toronto, and 58 per cent in Montreal. Canadians who want to experience totality from the comfort of home will need to wait until April 8, 2024 (Hamilton, Montreal and Fredericton), Aug. 23, 2044 (Edmonton and Calgary) or May 1, 2079 (Saint John and Moncton). In the meantime, back here in 2017...

Psychology of Hate: What Motivates White Supremacists? The sight of torch-wielding, chanting white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, jarred the country over the weekend, a national distress that only deepened when a counter-protester died and 19 others were wounded in a car attack there on Saturday. An alleged white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., has been charged in that attack. White supremacy — the view that white people are racially superior — and neo-Nazism are nothing new, of course. But recent research suggests the ideologies are becoming louder. A 2016 report from George Washington University's Program on Extremism, for example, found that white nationalist organizations have seen their follower numbers on Twitter grow by more than 600 percent since 2012. These groups had 3,542 followers collectively in 2012. That number had risen to 25,406 by 2016. What drives these hateful ideologies? New research suggests that tendencies toward aggression and ...

Recognition study Asks, would You rather cut Off Your Hand or Be known as a Nazi? It's a puzzler, all right: Would you rather amputate your dominant hand or have a swastika tattooed prominently on your face? This sample question is just one of several hypothetical scenarios included in a recent psychology study designed to test how much people value their reputation within their community. Like a game of "Would You Rather" taken to unsettling heights, the newly published study —  "Death Before Dishonor: Incurring Costs to Protect Moral Reputation" — is actually a collection of data from four separate studies. Researchers from Florida State University, publishing in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, combined raw numbers from previous research with new small-sample experiments that posed a series of either-or questions and scenarios. The Nazi-amputation query generated some interesting results. In a survey of 166 university stud...

Smart circulate? What Trump's IQ Contest might  display in reality After Secretary of State Rex Tillerson allegedly called President Donald Trump a moron back in July, the president boasted that he would score higher on an IQ test than Tillerson. But that may not mean as much as the president would like to think. In a recent interview with Forbes, Trump said of Tillerson's alleged insult, "I think it's fake news, but if he did that, I guess we'll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win." [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds] But what do IQ tests really measure? Are they a valid metric for intelligence? For some, the answer is fairly clear. "In my view, 'intelligence' is easy to define: It is that quality measured by performance on a well-standardized intelligence test," Robert Bilder, a psychologist at UCLA who researches cognition and psychopathology, told Live Science. But intelligence test...

Monsters and Zombies? Nope, americans Are most scared of the government This year, the scariest Halloween costumes in the United States could be corrupt government officials or polluted water — at least according to a new survey ranking the top fears of Americans.   Chapman University released its annual Survey of American Fears yesterday (Oct. 11), and fears about the government and the environment dominated the top 10. As in 2015 and 2016, this year, corrupt government officials topped the list, with 75 percent of survey respondents reporting that they were either scared or very scared of corrupt officials in the government. [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears] But the No. 2 fear this year was one that was entirely new to the list: "Trumpcare." Just over 55 percent of the people in the survey ranked this as something they were either scared or very scared of. Coming in third and fourth were pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes; and pollution of drinking wa...

People magazine 'most beautiful' list Embodies converting beauty requirements As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder — but People magazine may play a big role, too: The magazine has arguably helped to shape modern standards of beauty since launching its annual "World's Most Beautiful" list in 1990. This year, actress Julia Roberts claimed the title for People's "World’s Most Beautiful Woman" of 2017 for a record-breaking fifth time. And now, a new study sheds light on how beauty standards have evolved from 1990 — when Michelle Pfeiffer was named the first "Most Beautiful Person" by People — to the present day. Ideas about beauty can vary greatly based on personal preference and across different cultures. In the study, the researchers examined changing standards of beauty according to People magazine, which has the largest audience of any U.S. magazine, with a readership of 43.6 million adults, according to the s...

Pay attention, do not look: Why Your Ears Can tell more Than Your Eyes When it comes to understanding how someone truly feels, it may be best to close your eyes and just listen, a new study shows.   Empathy allows people to identify the emotions, thoughts and feelings of others. To do this, people tend to not only focus on the exchange of words, but also a person's facial expressions and other nonverbal cues. But a new study from the American Psychological Association suggests that you could be trying to do too much. In fact, relying on a combination of vocal and facial cues may not be the most effective method for understanding the emotions or intentions of others, the study said. [5 Ways Your Emotions Influence Your World (and Vice Versa)] "Social and biological sciences over the years have demonstrated the profound desire of individuals to connect with others and the array of skills people possess to discern emotions or intentions,” study author Michael Kraus, ...